Bass Family History & Genealogy

I've been examining family photos today ---my father and mother, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and some truly old people whom I never met.

I can place memories alongside some of these photos, especially of the uncles. I can see them gesture, at times playfully, at others in anger -- such as when my father stormed out of Uncle Charlie Bass' house as the result of an argument concerning the merits (or lack of same) of an independent union vs. that of an international union.

They were both officers in their respective organizations: Charlie was the Chairman of the Grievance Committee of the Independent Condenser Worker's Union (ICW) No. 2 (no one knows anything about No.1.) My father (Ray Bass, Sr.) was the Chief Steward and President of Schuyler Lodge No. 1794, of the IAM (International Association of Machinists AFL-CIO, CLC.) Neither gave the slightest nod to an anti-union position, not even for a micro second.

They began speaking to one another again about a year later and it was in that same room where the argument had occurred that I heard their brother, my Uncle Art, sing. I'd always been told that he was an excellent singer.

As I listened to him (everyone else had fallen silent), I realized that it was true, that he had a good voice --- once. He could still carry a tune, but it wavered and occasionally (though only just) fell out of key for a brief moment or two. He was older, about my age now. It happens..... No one said a thing but he didn't attempt another song. He knew.

Still, I was glad he did it because it gave me a glimpse of what had been. I could imagine it easily. Of course, I would never hear it . . . . .

These photographs are a bit unnerving. I can't hear them. They're a half-emptied memory --- the real half, the living breathing presence that was Uncle Charlie or Uncle Art, or any of them, gone.

I should've listened a little more closely.

rb

Two minutes, nearly a lifetime ago........

I remember approaching the Cape Cod Canal (which actually separates the Cape from the mainland) in our pretty much new 1956 Ford.

There were road-side stands selling salt-water taffy, and assorted souvenirs, all of them busy as we drove by. There was a guy, right out in the open under a deeply blue sky, in a white apron standing behind substantial metal pots out of each of which emerged roiling clouds of steam that were quickly dispersed in a constant breeze. He in turn was nearly surrounded by a number of people, customers my father said, for the lobsters the man was cooking. (When I learned, a couple of years later, that lobsters were boiled alive, I never touched them again. To this day, I have trouble looking at them, captive in super markets or restaurants....and would ban the practice if I could.)

It was exciting to me, so different from what I was used to in beautiful, land-locked, Berkshire County.

There was something else. The smell of the sea. (Sailors will tell you it's the land that you smell, the mud and the muck, dead fish and salt marshes, and civilization. The water, away from land, is clean and the air above it like it was new. But I'm not a sailor, and never will be. It's the smell of the sea.)

We crossed that huge bridge over the Canal and came to Hyannis (not Hyannisport.) We stayed at a place that, if my memory is correct (which is not certain here), was called the Pine Cone Motel. We lived in one of the cabins there. To me it was like a miniature house. Stove, kitchen table with a red-checkered cloth and a fridge that we eventually filled with strange brands of food from the far east (eastern Massachusetts, that is.)

The next day we set out in pursuit of our goal: Race Point, at the very tip of the Cape. We traveled right up the middle of that bicep and forearm that is the topographical hallmark of the State. We were engulfed in a world of stunted trees and sand. The Berkshires have a lot of sand, the gift of the glacier that melted at the end of the Ice Age. There, however, the sand is beneath the topsoil and not so obvious. Here, the sand was the topsoil. (I kept looking for Buster Crabbe and Cubby to come riding over one of the dunes on a camel.)

We made it to Truro, just before Provincetown, and pulled over. We left the car and walked, and walked....which was an adventure in itself.

Eventually we came to the last dune, climbing to its crest without a great deal of thought.

I looked out.

I saw -- or thought I saw -- an entire ocean coming at me. (Actually, it was only half-an-ocean, the other half heading for Portugal and Northern Africa. Still, it was enough.)

Line upon line upon line. Waves that just kept coming, as if we didn't exist -- as if we were unimportant to them. Yet they were aimed right at us. They came all the way from the horizon. There are no horizons in Berkshire County (the mountains get in the way.)

This was the first time I had seen one.

I wasn't scared, too much. Just a little.

I got over it.

Until then . . . .
.
It was the longest two minutes of my life.

rb

We think of the late 19th to early 20th Centuries as kinda funky --- an era when people put on funny clothes and wore odd and uncomfortable shoes --- but not all that different from today. They had the telephone, electric lights, the railroad, and of course cars would come along in a few years. Pretty much like us.

I don't think that's the way it was. Yes, they had phones - but they weren't in everyone's home - and electric lights - again not everywhere. The railroad did remain the wonder of the age though, and even beyond (well into the 1950's people were taking the train to Fenway Park to watch Tom Yawkey's boys.)

But this was still the Age of the Horse. An era that (if my high school history continues to hold true) began around 2500 BCE, with a people called the Mitanni and ended perhaps in the mid 1920's (in some places later) with a people called Ford (as in Henry.)

My grandfather, Adelbert (Del) Ephraim Bass, was born in 1874 and died in 1963. He was an adult in a world that depended on the horse for its most basic transportation, as it had for over 4000 years. He had worked with horses, for a man named Ballou in 1904, who was a farmer and a horse dealer. His father, Thomas, a Civil War Veteran, had been a coachman and later in life what was called an hostler (groom.) I knew nothing of these details until very recently.

But I knew of a story that my father often told and had long wondered if it was true or a family myth :

My grandfather, working as a teamster, was returning to the barn toward evening. As he entered the building he saw a man viciously beating a horse with a hammer. Del, without a word, went over to the guy and kicked the living you-know-what out of him. My father, who was a tough but not a violent man, related that story with pride.

To me, my grandfather was this very old, small fellow, balding, wearing thick glasses and holding up his pants (too high) with suspenders. I couldn't imagine him as a tough guy.... but my father knew better. Now I know better.

My grandfather was born before the Battle of the Little Big Horn and he died after President Kennedy was assassinated and less then six (6) years before we landed on the moon.

He saw more than four millennia of human experience and expectations vanish right in front of him by the time he was fifty. He entered a new age of the automobile, of radio, then television and eventually the exploration of space.

Quite a thing.

It was all just beginning..........

I can recall when we didn't have a television, as well as the first tv show we ever watched ("I Remember Mama.")

Like my grandfather, I grew up completely without the centerpiece of a new age -- in my case, the personal computer (this thing here in front of me.) To be honest, I hate them and need them. Too bad ... And too late.

A ancient Roman or Greek didn't live much differently than someone from the 18th, 19th Centuries...or even part of the 20th. Sulla or Socrates could have easily shared common experiences with a John Locke, or a Thomas Jefferson, with an Abraham Lincoln or my grandfather (or Yours .... though most of you will have to add the word 'great'.)

It's different now.

The human experience has changed . . . . . is changing.

For those of you who are young, there's something coming that will turn your world around. It's inevitable.

Isn't it ?

rb

I'm hoping to prove or disprove a family legend of a connection to the Bass Family.

Family legend has said that we are distantly related to Sam Bass "by marriage- only! and very distant!!" my late grandmother would remind us.
I have only just started to trace the lines but this is where I suspect they may intersect

My great grand parents moved to Dallas shortly after their marriage in 1915.
WA Conner was the fourth of 10 children of Charles Cathey Conner (b 1868) and Julia Elizabeth White (b1872) of Hill County Tx
William Alexander Conner and his bride Sallie lived at 4922 Lindsley Lane until the property was bought in the 50s for Interstate 30.

The house a few doors down was owned by William's aunt Josie ("Aunt Dodie", sister of Charles Cathey) Conner Estoll (b 1874) & her husband William (Uncle Will) Estoll. In 1930 it was occupied by their daughter's family Georgia Estoll Hendon b 1897, her husband Eugene b 1897 and their children Ovida b1918 & Eugene b 1920
Their other daughter,
Jewel Ruth b 1901, married JAMES CORBETT BASS b 1895 and lived across Lindsley (same side as Conners) with their children James E b 1921, William Lisle B 1925 and Mildred Ruth b 1926

I would imagine the most likey connection would be through the Denton Bass (1860)line but I'm having trouble making the connection.
Would the connection be through another sibling? a cousin?
According to the 1930 Dallas census, James' mother was born in PA, his father in TN and that he and Jewel married in 1918.
Is It possible that James Corbett Bass (b 1895) would be the son of Sam's brother Denton (b 1860) who was reputed to be in Texas in the late 1870's?
Were all of Daniel and Elizabeth's children born in Indiana?
The closest I've come to Tennessee is Daniel's mother Sarah's death place in Lawrence Co.
The information online stops abruptly with Daniel and Elizabeth's children- do you know where I might pick up a thread?

johnson city tennessee. my uncle jay bass and jess hale had a garage at the top of maine st.in the 50's and possibley before that he and his wife bobby lived across the street from the soilders home she was a harvey before. her brothers were nookie,and house,harvey.

I'm sandra bass daughter of josphine tyree.